This invention relates to router tables and fences for use with router tables.
Because of their versatility, electric routers are very widely used in woodworking, particularly in home and small commercial shops. Such routers use a powerful electric motor in a housing to which handles are attached for holding and manipulating the tool. The motor shaft terminates in a collet adapted to receive the shank of a router bit or cutter, and a base attaches to the housing and surrounds the cutter so that a portion of the cutter may protrude beyond the base, which bears against a workpiece during use of the router. The position of the base is adjustable up and down parallel to the rotating axis of the collet and cutter, and in plunge routers the relative position of the base and router cutter can change during use of the tool in order to "plunge" the cutter into the workpiece. Electric routers are generally intended to be used by moving the router relative to a stationary workpiece, with a portion of the router base bearing against the workpiece.
Substantial additional versatility can be achieved by mounting a router in an inverted position with the router cutter protruding up through an opening in a relatively large, flat work surface to provide, in effect, a shaper. With this arrangement, a workpiece lying on top of the work surface can be manipulated relative to the stationary router and a rotating router cutter, the position of which does not move relative to the workpiece. Such router tables are commercially available in a variety of configurations, and numerous plans for homemade router tables are also available.
Many commercially available router tables are provided with fences, and fences for both commercial and homemade router tables are frequently made by users by clamping or otherwise fixing a length of wood to the router table top. Because most router table operations using a fence require that only a portion of the router cutter protrude beyond the face of the fence, provision typically needs to be made for locating the fence at least partly around the cutter. This is sometimes accomplished by machining a slot or recess in the fence within which a portion of the cutter is positioned.
Such shop-made fences, and many of the commercially manufactured fences, suffer from a variety of deficiencies. For instance, many are difficulty to position, reposition or adjust accurately. Some have insufficient strength to resist deformation during use, and many do not easily accommodate chip and dust removal accessories. It is very typically desirable to use work hold-down and safety shield accessories with router table fences, and many fences accept attachment of such accessories only with difficulty, if at all.
It is thus among the objects of the present invention to provide a router table fence that is straight, rigid, easily adjusted and which accommodates good chip escape.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a router table fence that can be easily used in jointing a work surface.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a router table fence that will easily accommodate a wide variety of additional shop-made and commercially available accessories.
These and other objects of the present invention will become apparent from the following description of the invention, the accompanying drawings and the claims.